Lis speaks on Taming Your Paper Monster

It’s easier to be “green” in Oakland

Say what you will about Oakland. I know I have. Today was a day, though, I was really glad to live here. You see, today was the day Oakland rewarded me for being a good “green” citizen.

I started the day with a trunk full of hazardous waste, electronic waste, old plastic office supplies and four bags of “gently used” clothing that no longer fit. After driving around town to drop off my electronic and plastic waste at Universal Waste Management and my old clothes at Goodwill my next, and last stop was Oakland’s hazardous waste facility for Alameda County.

The only hitch was when I went to drop off the hazardous waste my GPS took me to a location smack dab in the middle of an overpass connecting Oakland’s 880 freeway with the shipyards. “Simon,” the cockney avatar of my GPS system, kept insisting that I’d arrived at my destination. I’m quite attached to Simon so I wanted to believe him and drove incredulously around the same loop twice before I had to accept the fact that even Simon was not invincible.

As it turned out, Simon was taking me to 2100 7th Street not 2100 East 7th Street (which for some reason is not on his radar) but is in fact the actual site of Oakland’s Hazardous waste drop off facility. The facility is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m Thursday through Saturday for residential hazardous waste . Of course thanks to Simon’s shenanigans, I arrived at 1:30 to closed gates. Fortunately, there was a kind employee standing outside of the main door getting ready to leave when I shouted out to him and explained how I “really wanted to be a good green citizen” and could he please take my shopping bag full of old CFL bulbs, kerosene oil and batteries. And so he did! Mission accomplished. What a great feeling to know that I live in a city that makes it easier for me to be “green.” Even Kermit the frog would like that.